If I couldn't, yes, go down
the Victoria Falls again, I'd
certainly be sailing barefoot
for France ~
for my deconstructed Great
American Hamburger, with a
friend of mine at Le Moulin
de Mougins, two days ago,
with an '82 St Emilion,
bottled the year he was
born.
We never did
rule out le déjeuner.
Vergé and Laurent are
a story for another
time.
steak tartare.
ReplyDeletedon't I know it, dearest mentor. but this was shot by a personal friend (and shameless follower) on Sunday, at the restaurant, at my urging, and we have a reverence for the GAH of which I wished to remind him, having gone to the expense and delay of humouring my request to divert himself en route between Seville and Carrara, in obscure architectural pursuits. How pleasingly this must have gone down, even squared and paved and meniscused as it was in luxe, I can't permit my corpuscles the exertion of discovering. So I shall rely on this sentimental little snapshot, with neo-carnal contemplations of extreme syntactic disruption, as you see. But I swear, he had better not have left a drop of it on his plate, because I'm to see him for a feast in a fortnight, and I'll be hanged if I'll waste Virginia silver queen corn and heirlooms and Banyuls vinegar on a guy who's sat before a Charolais spectacular like this and not gone mad. Oh, JtB, will you go there for me if he cannot call it back to mind in all four corners of its plush three stars?
ReplyDeleteI "settled" for a Perrier-Jouët Rose, and a Côtes du Rhône with the tartare, which paired well. This dish (in particular) was all about its complements--the retained heat of the potatoes for the tartare, the "wheat thin" flavors for the cheese, etc. It was yummy.
ReplyDeleteI cleaned my plate :)
Mm. The mousse, alone, of the champagne, ignoring its lavish aromatic intimations, would have laid a superlative predicate for this presentation and its accompaniment by the more youthfully fruit-forward and suppler syrah, a pairing of textures portraying its assimilation as more one of gusto than with the older cabernet franc's contemplativeness. You see an arc of time in these alternatives, of course, and of differential gravitations; you see the validity of the autonomy of personal taste, which I know you to have mastered far beyond your years. And you've just participated in a master class in gastronomy which renounces the illusion of mastery. How Virgilian these things really are.
ReplyDelete